Blue

There is one thing on screen: blue. It does not change through the film; no cuts, no images, no movement. On the sound side there is a dense construction: narrating voices, diary entries, hospital notes, street sound and music. The text describes the director's own condition. Derek Jarman was losing his sight to illness; what he saw was turning into a blue field, and the film gives that to the viewer directly. Derek Jarman directs. Nigel Terry, Tilda Swinton and John Quentin read, and Jarman speaks as well. The music is by Simon Fisher Turner. It is Jarman's last work; he died not long after its release. The subject is illness, treatment and the death of friends; the text names names and abstracts nothing. The form is radical and the choice comes from necessity; the possibility of visual telling had gone. The colour also carries a reference to art history, which Jarman states openly. The film was presented in cinemas, on radio and on television at once; sound and image were offered in separate media. The narrative nowhere asks for pity; the register is angry, sardonic and direct. Who it is for: anyone curious about experimental cinema and Jarman's work. Who it is not for: there is no image, the subject is extremely heavy, and the film is not watched in the ordinary sense.